Kirjahaku

Bobbi Bowen lives in Cleveland. It's 1937 in the second dip of a double-dip depression. When she leaves the apartment, she passes the Holy Rosary soup kitchen, with its straggle of shuffling men and women in their bedraggled coats. Most days she hums the new swing tunes-Cream Puff or Sing, Sing, Sing- because it seems every time she turns the radio on, she hears about another dismembered body left lying around town. At home, she ducks her parents' fights-sometimes ducking a flying plate or saucer. So when the bank cuts her mother's hours, she's got one chance to keep a roof over her family's heads-to turn her voice, her most private pleasure, into a public commodity. At the end of her sophomore year, she forever gives up her dream of art school to spend her nights singing in nightclubs. Even though she's able to make enough to support her family, security remains an illusion she can't seem to capture no matter how hard she tries. Is she making herself bait? Will her father's betrayal destroy her? If you liked Kristin Hanna's Four Winds, with its portrayal of human resilience in the face of trauma, you'll like The Reluctant Canary Sings.

Caught in the run-up to World War II, Connor considers enlisting. He expects to go to Europe where he hopes to protect his sister, Nora, who's in Paris with the Foreign Service. Although he's terrified for his sister. it's hard to think about leaving home and family for another years-long exile after bumming around the country during the Depression years of the 1930s. Like Claude Wheeler in Willa Cather's novel. One of Ours, Connor William Conroy faces diminished expectations when bank closings frustrate his dream of earning a college degree. Like Wheeler, the Nebraska farm boy serves his need to make a difference by taking part in his generation's war. Filled with flashbacks of his travels living off the lands and letters to keep him tethered to his family, Connor's story spans two of America's most disruptive decades in which Connor finds his cherished expectations thwarted.